UPDATE 8:15am PST (Dec 7): Just caught this on Twitter: "An update from the team. They are very close to completing the maintenance and doing some final testing. Things are looking very good!"

UPDATE 8:37pm PST (Dec 6): We just saw this from Dave "Smokejumper" Georgeson on Twitter: "Best laid plans of mice. We launch tomorrow at 10am [PST]. The background data scripts took WAY longer to run then anticipated. Sorry all."

Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Trolls... We have just evaluated the status of the current update and have come to the conclusion that we can either unlock servers and risk broken content, or ensure that we provide the best experience possible and delay the update to tomorrow morning.

We have to do it RIGHT. For all of you and for all of us. So please, bear with us, relax overnight, and let us sortie into the new day together. Community will be in office at 7:00am PST and will immediately review status and give you all an update. We are aiming for morning and working as hard as we possibly can.

Yer faithful Dwarf, Brasse

5:25pm PST: Latest update spotted on Twitter: "We are unlikely to launch until 8:00 PM PST or later. We are terribly sorry that this maintenance has taken so long. [Isulith]"

4:10pm PST: This was just posted on Facebook and Twitter: "We still do not have an updated ETA for the servers yet. We're very sorry. Please stay tuned and we'll let you know just as soon as we do. Thank you! [Isulith]"

Here's an update on accounts showing the incorrect number of characters:

For those of you concerned about your account status, character slots, etc., please don't panic yet. Accounts migrations are still in progress while servers are down.

When servers come back up, if things are not 100% correct on your account, STILL please do not panic. Proceed directly to our Customer Service team, who will be very happy to help sort things out for you, I promise: http://www.soe.com/support/ (no, not now - see previous paragraph about migrations still in process).

Now, let's all go back to watching and waiting in antici...... pation.

Brasse

Linda "Brasse" Carlson has posted an update about the downtime:

DOWNTIME EXTENSION:

We have encountered some unforeseen issues that we want to address before unlocking Accounts and Commerce, to ensure that we provide the best possible experience for all our customers. At this time, we expect Accounts and Commerce to come back online this afternoon. We regret that the unlock on EQII servers will also be delayed to this afternoon.

While we have no solid eta at this time, we will continue to update you as quickly as we can as more info becomes available!

I know, I know... I want to build a dungeon with my reforged Beastlord of Doom too!

Not true anything is going right ... the ******* "new"?! and ugly launcher shows his stupid "the chat server isnt available ... thats all! Doesnt even show an eqII choice at all. is ok when soe needs longer to load everything up till it works, ok, ill wait wiithout saying anything. BUT! i geel like treated !you are an idiot, watch our new launcher , dont expect anything to work even if we say so ....

Okay, I suppose I can deal with the downtime so that SOE can make sure everything actually works when they come back up ... BUT ... for those of us who are PAYING to play the game, there should be some kind of compensation. I think everybody who has a paid subscription should get a week free to copensate for the (now) two days of down time that could go on for who-knows-how-long. I'm willing to wait, but at least throw us a bone!

Whiners? Let's do the math here. There are roughly 200,000 paying customers who are not getting what they are paying for. Having been down for 36+ hours Sony made about $.75 on each account for the down time when they were not delivering the product. Therefore Sony has made $150,000 for services they have failed to deliver. Whenever there is an upgrade or patch it the same old ****. They never use test servers and that causes extended downtimes for paying customers. Given their track record for the last year, not counting the Anon thing, they have made nearly $1,000,000 for services they have failed to deliver. So don't talk to paying customers about whining. You don't know what the **** you're talking about or are a Sony employee told to defend Sony in light of yet another complete disregard for the paying customers.

Large Texti didnt even try to log in on the 6th i knew it would be messed up but what i DIDNT EXPECT !!!!

1. DONT RECALL SOE EVER SAYING THEY WERE MERGING EXTENED VIA THIS EXPANTION....in ANY OF THE LETTERS!!

2. wtf !!!!! why are my toons from LIVE doing in FREEPORT LOG ON!!! on org eq diffrent servers (7th hammer ect ) you CHOOSE which server you want to long on to...SOE SCREWED UP!!!

or is it to much to ask that SOE use eq1 as a BLUE PRINT ON HOW TO DO THIS MERGER????? OH WAIT extened is a CASH COW.. since live was dieing via subscriptions just throw it in with extended ...

EMPTY promisses from SOE .... your live and extened toons will be fine..

JUST silly of me to think SOE would use eq1 as the blue print on how to do this... its just ONE SERVER BEING merged (live has multi servers to choose from)... extened has ONE..why the **** did you not just add extened....TO THE LIVE SERVER CHOICES!!! of servers you can log into!!!

3. CUSTOMERS would not be going wtf ....why are toons from crushborn doing in my LOG IN FOR FREEPORT!!!

4. AND WTH IS WITH ONLY 2 TOONS BEING ...........UNLOCKED!!!!!! now that the number of toons in the login are now 7(2 are from live aka crushborn server from live)

has SOE DOWNGRADED!! THE AMOUNT OF TOONS FOR SLIVER AND BRONZE?? TO 2??

my acounts are sliver..so do the lucky folks who have bronze now only get 1 TOON......

well thats killing the golden goose... so your gona lose more of thoughs types of CUSTOMERS!!!

with bronze i think you USE TO GET 2 toons...... so now they get 1 well that will be a good amount of money and CUSTOMERS you will lose.. who the heck wants to play even free with ONE TOON...

With silver you got 4 toons ... NOW YOU GET 2... so much for SOE WORD BEING WOTH ANY THING...... thats a major DOWNGRADE OF THE ACCOUNT....

GUESS THATS WHY THEY NEVER REALLY WENT INTO THE attual changes that would happen to BRONZE AND SLIVER..........WELL DONE SOE...

im sooooo glad i DID NOT .......do my usual activating my subs for the holidays......and will NOT if this is going to be the standard...

It really does look like the staff is sticking it to the people with fewer character slots every time they post "character names" in their own names. "Corporate D-Bag" I could tolerate as a gaming alias though, "Yes-Man" "Hotairheals" ect.

I'd love to see honesty patched in soon. If you think about it, reliability in projected maintenance would be one of the only service they could truly call new because it's a promise that is seldom if never, kept here, but a promised since day 1. We are buying a service from liars (point of established fact), with a long, flawless history of habitual bs and spin given to it's customers. We've been understanding for years now, if apologies are made and not kept it makes it a lie, no matter how polite you speak it. Patience does not make truth, it just gives a lie time to fester further. If you say the server will be down for three days and get it up in a day and a half you could have come out of this like rock starts Sony.

I find myself wondering what SOE is thinking regarding the Fee with AOD.

Here we are on the heels of the Anon thing where soe really dropped the ball keeping their subscribers personal information private. Now i feel as if they are adding insult to injury by charging 40 - 90 dollars for this small expansion which is the equivalent to that of Splitpaw Saga and Blood Lines. There has been alot of talk regarding the pricing of AOD on AB server among the players there and i too find myself in agreement with them.

It dissapoints me to see SoE Fleecing their paying customers this way.

Are we paying full price for this small addon to:

A. Support the Free Players Finacially ?

B. Is this SoE's way of recovering monies they lost over the Anon scandal?

Many dont wish to or have decided no to spend their hard earned money for a few AA points and a new class to play.

After reading the CTOs explanations and logging on to my account. (4 of my characters say "locked. too many characters for your account) and missing one paid for extra character slot, I can tell that we PAYING customers are getting the shaft because of this transition to free-to-play.

I suspect this is just the beginning of our problems. If they had done these transitions one at a time, we all wouldn't have been so inconvenienced.

Management spends too much time on videos chatting with one another and not enough time seeing that the game actually works. More programming and testing and less chatting with each other is the answer.

My family's playing style is slow, as we work our way through the stories and quests, so we're no where close to lvl 80-90 content, but..... My wife and I broke down and bought DoV for my boys for Christmas so my sons can get griffon mounts. (Shhh, don't tell them.....hope they don't read this post.) Why? Becuase sometimes your best advertising is fan art. Jethal and Elquinjena are two players who make youtube videos and post them. They put one up that has a rather catchy song and in-game video telling the story of a ratonga who betrays Freeport to get to Qeynos and be with his friends. My older son has been singing the song around the house for months now, and watching the video over and over, sooo.... It wasn't hard to figure out what he would like in his Christmas stocking.

(We're going to buy him the Translucent one, the one on fire...) Anyways, the link is here if anyone wants to see the vid.

Okay, while we're all waiting..... This song keeps running through my head and it is actually appropriate this year, called "Frostfell, Don't Be Late..." sung by a bunch of ratongas It's at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5v-UF8yLo0.Enjoy.

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"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. " Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Many of the kids who play this game play with their parents, it's like what would happen if parents were there to watch commercials between cartoons with their kids and being able to explain why the commercials are bull. Is anyone at sony wondering how a product that gets bashed by parents, validated and reinforced by repetitive and consistent poor performance, will affect that child's purchasing habits when they get old enough to spend their own money on something that says Sony on it? These are no longer random glitches in production, this has become a habit firmly displayed over the course of years now.... I can do this all day.

Exactly, my wife and I play this game with my two sons. I had to explain to my older son why Frostfell was announced to start Dec. 6, but he still can't have snowball fights (his favorite, since we live in a warm climate.) I told him that patience is a virtue, people make mistakes, and maybe we'll try LOTRO if it isn't up soon. (Ba, ba, ba, boom.....Sacrilege!)

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"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. " Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Why don't all the complainers create a guild and call it "Cry Babies". SOE is doing more and more to make your game better for you and all you can do is complain when they hit a bump in the road. It's a shame you can't be a little more forgiving especially at a time of year when everyone should be happy.

Large Textlol a bump in the road ... well guess soe likes it that way... calling ppl NAMES is quite juvinel... i guess if you buy a stove that is constanly needing repairs and have to keep returning it ... till you get one that doesnt break down all the time..

IS WHINNING??

ive played eq1 since 1999 .......and it was never this bad

the last time i left eq1 i sent them email stating why... too many UNSCEDUALD DOWN TIMES......in one mth it was down for over half of the mth..... AND I WAS PAYING FOR THIS PRIVLAGE......not any more

how would you like it if your cell phone was as un useable as extened has been in the last couple of yrs..

would it be WHINNING if you complaned to the cell phone company for SERVICES NOT GIVEN THAT YOU PAYED FOR??

or would you eventualy move your cell phone service to another MORE RELIABLE COMPANY...

SOE fired almost 300 of their USA workers ... well guess their paying the price ....... NOW

sony has given itself a untrustworthy name and poor customer service... as well as putting out bad produc(yes bad produc..definition some thing that dose not WORK CORRECTLY)

SAYING OOPS WE DIDNT SEE THIS PROBLEM COMING..

if a produc sold to the public is NOT WORKING CORECTLY.... most COMPANYS WILL refund or pay some kinda restatution to the CUSTOMER..sony for extened usually thumbs thier NOSE AT their paying customers..

these are NOT bugs that take a couple of hrs to fix...ill bet good money it will be messed up till the new yr

i canclled my recuring sub after the last expantion mess...in which soe discovered they had been HACKED!! and was down for 6wks

i would have thought they soe had learned their lessons well from eq1...

Kiyoshie, If you're a paying customer, it's not whining. It's called feedback. Business researchers actually work hard to get this information, so this forum is doing them a favor. That's the business world.

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"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. " Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

CONSTRUCTIVE feedback is absolutely appropriate. I was referring to teh folks who are simply complaining. Trust me I work in an industry where feedback is vital, but whining just for teh sake of whining does nobody any good.

Marketing? Is that what you call it? Wise companies know it as merely good manners. All successful enterprises begin with common courtesy. No company ever kept their customers loyal with rudeness. The same is true of any MMO or guild or organization. And since your tone appears snarky, I propose that you learned nothing. Good day to you, Miss, and good hunting.

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"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. " Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

The evidence has arrived. Engineers and programers are not that hard to find, new business for the fading MMO scene is, or there would be no free to play to attract customers. Which is more affordable, cleaning house and getting new people for very replaceable jobs to do it right and protect dwindling revenue streams, or keep letting this eq2 staff run this game into the ground? The Overlord is naked in Freeport right now and I wonder who ISN'T saying at SoE "So you want us to jerk around a bunch of people who, in their free-time, get together and create paramilitary organizations that manage inventories, revenues, and real estate, and you want us to tell them what... "wooops, we're sowwy we bwoke yoor towy, shhhhhhh go to bed?" SoE is wasting money on the people that are supposed to be helping them earn it, who are really bad at making it seem like they do anything right. This stuff would never fly in my guild (game or no), too much to ask from SoE though.

Okay, I get the loose analogy to the familiar idea of "the emperor has no clothes", but I can't help wondering how many younger people without as thorough a grounding (cough) in literature, are going to be running over to Freeport when the servers are up to see if Luclin is running around disrobed. Sorry, fighting a cold, so things are sort of striking me literally and sideways in my medicine head. Just put a funny picture in my head, that's all. :)

Edited, Dec 7th 2011 9:50am by Maccabee4

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"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. " Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

I have been hearing people getting their preorder confirms/billing through the last 15 hours or so. Thing is, that billing means when you log on you have access. If they waited until servers were up, you guys would be less than satisfied about not having access to play your beastlord, dungeon maker, mercenaries, craft apprentices until billing would happen.

So be happy they did it during the downtime rather than after the downtime, k!

No one saw this coming? It happens every time they do a large update. I don't know why anyone is surprised or disappointed. Yes, they took my money quickly too. Always do...yes it didn't go smoothly, it never does. No surprise. But once it's done it plays. You get your 0-90 level in 24 hours and you continue on to something else. You do your raids, your AA and play on until the next update...then you always complain all over again. After this many years you'd think you'd be used to it by now. The biggest problem today is no one has patience for anything. Energy drinks, candy, energy bars...You want withdrawals? Withdraw from those and maybe, just maybe you can deal with delayed updates a little better. I really feel sorry for most of you. Don't like it? Quit playing. Spend your money on other things, like rent, school, real food.

Geez, seriously, relax for a change. As long as there are updates, there will be delays...some of them HUGE. Yes, I know you hate me. Oh well...

SOE, keep trying. Some day you'll make most of them happy. Until then, keep trudging.

Hi folks, this is Rich Lawrence, CTO with SOE. Some of you probably remember me from original Planetside as "Twist". TR rules, but I digress.

I must apologize for the extended down time of EQ2 while we get everything in order for free to play. Obviously we didn't anticipate it being this long. I know how important it is for the game to be available when you want to play, and what it means to miss a raid you were looking forward to, or check out new features. In this case the issues that are keeping you from playing are under my watch, so I need to say it: I'm sorry. I value my game time as well when I can get it, and I know how you feel.

EQ2 is a great product with a long history for us, and part of the reason we are taking so long on this update is because of that. Let me explain a bit. In order for everyone that played in the past or currently to get the best experience when logging in on the first day of free to play, there were many changes that had to be made in data to represent all of the features those players (past or present) were entitled to, plus new goodies, and the merge of what amounts to two different products in a business sense (EQ2 and EQ2X). This is a lot of accounts - millions - and a lot of 'business rule' complexity. While we have top of the line hardware running our databases for this kind of thing, and folks dedicated just to keeping it working well, the result of all that took quite a bit longer than we thought it would.

I hear the engineers of you out there (and yes, I know we have many very capable developers in our audience) saying, "But you should have modeled it ahead of time and known how long it would take!". You're absolutely right. We did. Turns out our model was just a tad less than 1:1 scale in some respects. I know, I know, Captain Obvious calling.

In the end we realized two things as the maintenance progressed - that this was going to take much longer than we thought it would, and correspondingly the results would be not as well tested as they should be before release. For instance, there was a risk that some out of those millions might not end up with the right race packs or character slots. In the end, we decided it was best to extend the maintenance through the night so we could do a better job of checking that kind of thing.

Please understand that we don't do this casually or think that it's a lack of dedication. Most of the key people involved in this publish, on the game team and our platform side, have been here very long days and every day leading up to this. I just had to tell some folks that had been here for 30+ hours to go get some sleep. If there was any way I thought we could be certain you'd be able to play with everything correct tonight, we would have done that.

I'm committed to changing how we do this type of operation going forward so that it has much less visible impact on you the players - we will trade more back end prep time and resources against less publish downtime, basically. I do hope everybody enjoys the massive effort the game team has put into this release. I'll see you online tomorrow.

I can understand they want everything right before launch and frankly knew it would take a lot longer they they originally said, it always does. But what I am REALLY annoyed about is they have taken my money (and probably everyone elses) for the AoD collectors expansion pre-order at 5.41pm PST yesterday, even though they knew at that time that they were way off being able to get it back up again anytime soon. It's disgraceful! That being said, I am patient and wait yet another day to access what I have already paid for in expansion and as a gold member. But after all this wait, when it finally does launch, there had better be no glitches. Last time i tried to log in, it said failed to find launchpad, check if i'm connected to the net and try again! Oh and to SOE, how about some double xp and half price SC for us patient customers? I think its the least you can offer!

Lol figures. I get one night a week to play. Should have seen this coming when I wrecked my jeep pulling out of the garage at work then had to pay $9 for parking when It should have been 3. It turns out to be one of those days. Oh well maybe they will have it fixed by next week when I can play again.

Did i understand this correctly... they threw up their hands and said sorry people we are going to bed and will get back at in the morning while keeping the servers down? You are joking right? So SWTOR comes out on the 20th right? Yeah I rather spend my $60 on that then just 1 class and 20aa with Zero New Content.

Typical.... Your 7am is my 2pm.... Yet another day wasted with this complete mess of an update. SOE make it very difficult not to attack them, if i ran a company like this i would not be in business very long. If there is an issue then fix it, if this means a late night then so be it. Oh boy they make it so hard to support them do they not?

Alright, Everyone! Looks like it's time to go to bed or drink your ever-crack withdrawals away! Update straight from the EQ2 FB page and Twitter:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Trolls... We have just evaluated the status of the current update and have come to the conclusion that we can either unlock servers and risk broken content, or ensure that we provide the best experience possible and delay the update to tomorrow morning.

We have to do it RIGHT. For all of you and for all of us. So please, bear with us, relax overnight, and let us sortie into the new day together. Community will be in office at 7:00am PST and will immediately review status and give you all an update. We are aiming for morning and working as hard as we possibly can.

Alright, Everyone! Looks like it's time to go to bed or drink your ever-crack withdrawals away! Update straight from the EQ2 FB page and Twitter:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Trolls... We have just evaluated the status of the current update and have come to the conclusion that we can either unlock servers and risk broken content, or ensure that we provide the best experience possible and delay the update to tomorrow morning.

We have to do it RIGHT. For all of you and for all of us. So please, bear with us, relax overnight, and let us sortie into the new day together. Community will be in office at 7:00am PST and will immediately review status and give you all an update. We are aiming for morning and working as hard as we possibly can.

Yer faithful Dwarf, Brasse"

servers are always down for extended times during expansions so no different than other times... hopefully they get it sorted out in the morning.

I'm guessing the issues are related to them having to transition our accounts with the F2P change. Frankly I'd rather it take them extra time then to login and find out my account (and everyone else's) is completely messed up.

I'm going to bed, there's tons of people in our IRC room chatting if anyone wants to hang out there. See you all in the morning and we'll continue to update this article when SOE starts giving us morning updates. :)

Inexcusable, unacceptable incompetence. This is why everybody except Sony use test servers to make sure their sh*t works before they commit.

The question is why was this allowed to happen again? Is it because Sony is too cheap to use test servers or hire qualified help or is it they don't give a rat's *** about how much they jerk around paying customers?

Um.... When I say test server I mean the whole package is uploaded on a test platform and run until all the problems are resolved, not testing portions of code for new stuff in a limited way. Clearly a full test was never done otherwise the upload wouldn't have failed at implementation, would it?

OK late as it already is for getting the servers up, and in fact they are not up yet, and they just announced a hot fix for 7AM tomorrow. I'm kind of scratching ny head here and asking myself if they know they have to hot fix it, why not do it now while they are still fighting the servers anyway? (Imitates a Homer Simpson-ish 'Doh!')

Deliberate or idiot, easier to be first when people think your the second. I'm not saying this is on purpose, but I am starting to wonder how something like this update, which most computer programmers I know in school do just to qualify for an internship at a crummy job, could possibly be so problematic. I am wondering what SOE's excuse could possibly be for this unprofessional catastrophe... I pay money for this? Is that the question I am being prodded into asking? Does posting something mean I'm more likely to stay or go, I wonder what the stats say about that?

I suspect this has as much to do with the launch of FTP as the new features. When I tried to log in this morning, inadvertently I did receive some information back from their servers. Even as a Gold member, it showed four of my seven characters "locked" because I was not authorized, or some such term, for that many character slots. I'm sure this is part of what they are working on and testing -- ensuring that this is not what paying members see when they log in. After all, the last thing they would want to do is tick off their remaining, subscribed customers. Right? :)

Edited, Dec 7th 2011 9:13am by Maccabee4

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"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. " Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

I wasn't even going to get the expansion, seeing as I thought it was a little half-assed to be considered one.. let alone the fact that I've been playing less and less.

But, I bought a very late pre-order last night with only thirty minutes left before the servers went down for update.. and now.. I have to wait longer then expected. Lol. (Probably wouldn't be so bad if I weren't EST. time. Or if everything didn't take place in Cali!)

Looks to be getting there, a check as of 12:45 PM shows the player download (at least for me) completed, and you can log in and get as far as the character sceen before you hit the server status which has changed from "Down" to now as "Locked"

Ok, I'm Eastern Time zone also, and It's 6:15pm now... And I worked a 9 hr day & there still not finished?? Didn't this start like at 3am EST this morning?? Like 15 some hrs so far to do this mess that we really didn't ask for??